On Tuesday, a cargo rocket launches at the space station

On Tuesday, a cargo rocket launches at the space station

On Tuesday, the rocket will start with a payload for the crew of the ISS. Cygnus unmanned ship, located on the Atlas-5 rocket, is ready to take off during a 30-minute launch window at 11:11 am (1511 GMT) from Cape Canaveral (Florida).

The vessel is serviced by Orbital ATK. This is the 7th mission under the contract for the delivery of a payload to the ISS in the amount of 1.9 billion dollars. The total number of supplies took 3479 kg, including equipment and experiments on growing food and treating cancer.

On Tuesday, a cargo rocket launches at the space station

The Cygnus ship approaches the International Space Station in October 2016.

He should arrive at the station on April 22 after the planned docking with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Fedor Yurchikhin and astronaut Jack Fisher. When they unload the delivery, they will load Cygnus with garbage that will burn with the ship in the earth's atmosphere.

But before that, the ship will spend several hours on an automated experiment to understand how the fire behaves in microgravity. Saffire-III is the third experiment aimed at creating a large-scale fire in a space environment. “The fire will light up at a safe distance for the station, and we will receive the necessary data before re-entering the atmosphere,” NASA said.

On Tuesday, a cargo rocket launches at the space station

The unmanned cygnus ship delivers cargo to the ISS in October 2016.

The experiment takes 2.5 hours, of which 20 minutes is the measurement of a tissue panel burn of 1 meter (when it reaches 0.4 meter). This will help to understand the behavior of the fire, as well as to protect future missions.

Broadcast to 360 degrees

Live broadcast available. The viewer will have the opportunity to watch everything at 360 degrees, as if from the scene. The weather forecast for the launch of the rocket was 90% favorable, if you do not take into account a few clouds.

The freighter was named after astronaut John Glenn (the first American to go into Earth orbit).

“During the report, we were proud that the ship was named OA-7Cygnus in honor of John,” said Frank Calberston, president of the Orbital ATK space systems group. “After all, he was the man who opened the door to space for the American program.”

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